


The Bottom of the River

by andnowforyaya



Series: The Descent [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, M/M, Possession, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-03 23:03:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The spell is cast. No one could have imagined that, in bringing Stiles back from death, Stiles had to bring something along, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Hold my hand_  
 _Oh baby, it’s a long way down to the bottom of the river_  
-Delta Rae

\--  
  
Darkness clings to him like fine mist to a wolf's pelt, shimmering in some light, invisible in others. His friends fall back as he rises, as he blinks back into life, and he senses the fear and uncertainty in the pack, reaches for it as though it were a tangible thing, and feels hunger. It gnaws at his stomach with cold, stiff fingers.

"Stiles?" a voice whispers, high-pitched and barely-there. Lydia. She is the closest of them all, her warmth calling to him. His bones are stiff as he draws his knees to his chest, feeling a shiver begin where his heart should be and sending trembling tendrils outwards. His breath is icy in the space between his legs and torso, head tucked into his arms. Stiles has never been so cold in his life. His heart beats in his ears, slow and faint. "Are you...alive?" Lydia's voice breaks on the last word.

“Give him a minute,” Scott all but growls. “It looks like it worked.”

“Of course it worked,” Lydia snaps, self-assured again. “ _I_  cast the spell.”

Derek growls, and they fall silent. Lydia withdraws, taking the warmth with her; Stiles wishes he could grab at her to make her stay, to bring her closer, but even as he is wishing it his arms ache in phantom protests. For the first time since waking he feels the dead pine needles of the forest floor digging into him. The wind whistles through the tops of the trees faintly as the moon shines through the clearing they occupy. He smells the fallen leaves decomposing underneath them, and the crispness of Autumn, and something burning. Or something that has burned.

A heavy weight drapes across his shoulders, and then he smells leather and smoke and the faint musk of a man. Derek’s jacket is warm. He forces his fingers to gather the material tighter around him and finds his movements are groggy, lethargic. He tries to say, “What happened?” but his teeth are chattering too hard for him to form the words.

Then he is being lifted like a child, lurched away suddenly from a world so new, and cradled to Derek’s chest. He leeches the warmth from him without shame, and finally the trembling begins to subside. “What happened?” he manages this time, his voice scratchy and raw.

“You died,” Derek rumbles, as the rhythm of his stride rocks Stiles into the space between wakefulness and slumber.

“Hm.” Stiles sighs, content to be swayed, wanting nothing more than to sink into the warmth that Derek must not know he is providing, so needed. Behind them, he hears Scott and Lydia and possibly Isaac scrambling along the forest floor to make even with Derek’s purposeful walk.

In the next few moments he has dropped into sleep completely, and it is a sleep like nothing he has ever had. Dreamless and dark and bottomless. Like falling into a void.

Stiles disappears into it, and does not bother wondering if he will wake again.

.


	2. Chapter 2

It takes weeks for the chill to leave his bones, and even after, there will be a breeze, or a noise, or a word, and Stiles will be wracked with shivers until a shuddering breath brings him back under control. He gets used to it, and so do the others, and his dad has taken to turning up the thermostat whenever he can.

Isaac stays close to him like a guard dog when Derek can’t, never more than a step away in the hallways at school. It bothers Stiles at first, but then he wonders if it is Isaac’s proximity that keeps the ice at bay. Scott is still his best friend, but more often than not, he’s sharing his warmth somewhere with Allison. Lydia looks into it, but her magic is a new-fangled thing, still sparking at her fingertips and wild.

“Maybe it’s like a reminder, a little souvenir you’ve brought back from the land of the dead,” she tells him one day while the pack is in the cafeteria for lunch, and he grimaces and laughs at the same time. Scott raises his eyebrows in alarm, and Isaac growls. Allison reflexively looks around the crowded room, no doubt checking for eavesdroppers. And for Jackson.

“It couldn’t have been like a coin from the River Styx or something like that,” Stiles says. “At least I could have put that shit up on Ebay.”

“Is that like a river in Egypt?” Scott asks, and both Lydia and Stiles roll their eyes in sync. Scott has a lot of redeeming qualities, but his knowledge of mythology and lore is not one of them.

“Don’t worry about it, baby,” Allison appeases, rubbing a thumb over the top of Scott’s hand on the surface of the table, and Scott is appeased. So easy. He digs for a French fry that is still crunchy and holds it to Allison’s lips. She takes an exaggerated, smiling bite, lips smacking.

No one wants to talk about that night in the woods, but sometimes flashes of it will return to Stiles without warning, just as he’s sure it does to the others. He hears the wretched snarling and wrenching cries in the loud conversations of his peers; feels the warm spatter of blood on the lacrosse field and even has to be carried out of a game once, stunned and smelling copper and sweat. The Alpha Pack had left them all scattered and vulnerable. Jackson still ignores them in the halls and when they call. But in the end it was Stiles who had paid.

He wonders what would have happened if Lydia had not been there, if Lydia had not been studying under Deaton, if Lydia had hesitated for a moment longer. Would Derek had given him the bite? Or Scott? He thinks of Isaac’s need for acceptance and affection running just under the surface of all of his actions, and believes that Isaac out of all of them would have acted first. Or had Stiles been past even that point, so close to death? He shudders. Isaac, predictably, thinks he’s having another episode, and surreptitiously slides closer to him on the cafeteria bench.

“It’s the river you cross into the afterworld, according to Greek mythology,” Isaac explains. “And it’s believed that you pay someone to ferry you across.”

“Look at you, all knowledgeable,” Lydia coos. Isaac preens subtly. It doesn’t seem possible, but even more heat radiates from the young member of the pack, which has Stiles leaning into him.

“It’s not too difficult to one-up Scott in the area of general knowledge,” Isaac teases, teeth bared. Scott bares his teeth in response, but playfully. Stiles wonders when it was that everyone became so wolf-like. It must have been a gradual shift, so unnoticeable. It seems like Scott’s always been a little wolfy.

“I’m good at knowledge,” his best friend grumbles.

“You’re very proactive,” Lydia concedes. “Tactical skills. You’d make a good boy scout.”

“Except he’d eat all the other boys,” Stiles interjects, chuckling at Scott’s indignant, “Hey!”

Allison admits, “He’s gotten better at that, too,” and they all laugh, like they could be a couple of normal high school students at lunch, gossiping about the latest in high school news. Only of course they are not, and in the middle of all this laughter is when Stiles is pulled under.

Like he is suddenly submerged in ice and water, heart stuttering at the abrupt change. He sucks in a breath but cannot breathe, feels something tingling at the base of his neck, and then cold fingers at his skull, trying to pry him open and look inside. His vision dims and blacks out. There is no pain, only cold, and in the cold he hears a low, strangled voice:

_“Your kind are not welcome here.”_

The present comes back to him in a rush of breath, and then he is reeling as though dragged from an ocean. He gasps and there is Isaac, and there is Scott, their eyes matching round disks of bewildered concern. He realizes he has collapsed out of his seat, and is clinging to Isaac’s shirt like it’s a lone piece of driftwood. “Um,” he says gracefully, only it comes out choked, like he really had been drowning.

Only when he hears the swell of conversation beginning to pick up again in the cafeteria does he realize that it had fallen silent. This must be what Erica had felt like, before. So many eyes on her. For a brief moment he feels the pain of her and Boyd’s absences, and thinks Derek must feel it even more intensely.

“We’re taking you to the nurse,” Scott informs him, eyes returned to normal and now with a determined glint. “Whether it’s supernatural, or wolfy, or witchy, or whatever, you should really go to the nurse.”

“For the love of god, please don’t carry me,” Stiles moans.

So of course Isaac carries him there. It will be the main topic of conversation in the locker rooms and gym for the next week.

.


	3. Chapter 3

“Say it again.” Derek’s voice is rough and low, and it sends a different kind of shiver down Stiles’ back altogether. The group came to the pack leader’s relatively new apartment after school, even Lydia, worried but unsure how worried they should be. Derek no longer lives in a burnt-out shell of a home in the middle of the woods; he moved into a modest apartment near the edge of town, where the woods are still just a short drive (or run) away. Now they congregate in his living room, all seated together on a leather couch that should only hold three, with Derek pacing before the television in front of them. “Don’t leave anything out.”

  
Stiles swallows his instinctual retort: He’s told the same story four times, and a fifth isn’t going to make much difference. The older seems to sense this defiance, though, and snarls before Stiles gets the chance.

  
So he says: “Okay, okay. Jeez. We were at lunch. We were talking about, you know, things. Like girls. And lacrosse. And Call of Duty. And then I got cold, and Lydia was like, ‘Oh maybe it’s a souvenir from when you were dead,’ so then we talked about that for a little bit, and Scott didn’t know what the River Styx was, but everything was fine for a few. I don’t know what happened after. It got really cold. Like, really, really, freezing cold. Colder than ever. Like I was in the arctic circle, but underwater. So I tried to breathe, but I couldn’t breathe, which is pretty flippin’ alarming, you know, but I couldn’t even be alarmed about it because I blacked out - well, I must have, anyway - and I heard this voice. It was --”

  
He tries to remember what the voice sounded like, where it came from, if he had heard it before. Maybe there is something that he’s missed in the previous tellings of the story. He shakes his head, ridding himself of these thoughts. “It was definitely female. And angry. Scratchy, like someone who had been out all night, you know? She said, ‘your kind are not welcome here.’ And then I came to and Isaac was holding me up because at some point I apparently fainted, or something.”

  
“ _Your_ kind,” Derek mutters darkly, like he had after every previous iteration. “What does that mean? Humans? Because you’re human, right?” The Alpha has the habit of crowding someone’s personal space when being confrontational, or just when presented with something unfamiliar, and this is what he does now with Stiles, looming over the younger man suddenly. He blinks and Stiles sees a flash of red there.

  
“I think so?” Stiles answers uncertainly. “Unless Lydia cast a really weird spell and brought me back as a, I don’t know, vampire.”

  
Scott hisses reflexively.

  
Lydia, perched on the arm of the couch and farthest from Stiles, shoots him an incensed glare. “Nothing I do is _weird._ You’re not a vampire.”

  
“You never know,” Scott grumbles.

  
Allison is sandwiched between Lydia and Scott, and she looks back and forth between them, her best friend and her boyfriend. “We need to know what it means,” she says, bringing the group back on track. “We need to know if it will happen again, or if it’s something dangerous.”

  
“I 100% expect this to be dangerous,” Stiles says helpfully, glib. “Because when is it ever not?”

  
On his other side, Isaac hums his agreement, but the way his knee is shaking means he’s anxious about something. Stiles puts a hand on his knee, and the shaking stops, briefly. Isaac reaches an arm up and over the back of the couch, the heat of it prickling Stiles’ neck.

  
He starts to lean back, but then Derek is pacing again, and he’s pulled forward by his intensity. “Maybe it was a message, but not meant for you,” he says, eyes practically glowing in thought. “Maybe it was meant for me.”

  
Stiles sighs. Typical for Derek to think that any supernatural event is tied to him. He must think he has the reigns on all things mysterious and cool. “Meant for _you_?” Stiles jabs. “I seriously doubt that some 300-hundred-year-old spirit knows who Derek Hale is.”

  
Derek’s eyes widen. “So you think it was a spirit.” Finally, he takes a seat on his coffee table, narrowly missing sitting right on top of a half-full mug of now-cold hot chocolate. Stiles loves hot chocolate. “A ghost?”

  
“Werewolves, witches, kanima. Why not ghosts, too? Plus isn’t what I heard suspiciously haunting-worthy?”

  
Scott mimics in what he believes to be a ghostly tone, “Oooh, your kind are not welcome,” complete with waving arms. Allison smacks him on a wobbling limb and he laughs.

  
“I don’t know a thing about ghosts,” Derek admits, not moved by their lighthearted acting. His brows furrow. Any deeper, Stiles thinks, and they could plant a garden in the rows.

  
“I didn’t know a thing about werewolves,” Stiles counters, “until you bit Scott. Well, other than that their affected by the full moon, and that a bite turns you, and that they brood.”

  
“Deaton will know about ghosts,” Lydia interrupts with her ever-present assurance. She nods to herself. “He can help us.”

  
“We don’t need Deaton’s help.”

  
“Excuse me? You do realize that I cast the spell, and that Deaton is training me, and that apparently he is the fount of all knowledge in all things supernatural.”

  
Derek slumps. “I don’t trust him.”

  
“You don’t trust anybody,” Scott says, but Derek shoots him a meaningful look, and Scott looks away, cowed. Stiles knows what Derek’s expression meant: Sometimes, I trust _you._ By extension, that means that there are times when he trusts _Stiles_ , too. A hot stone is planted low in Stiles’ gut at the realization, and its warmth spreads through to his elbows and wrists and knuckles. Suddenly, the couch is overheated. He feels Isaac’s fingers laid across his shoulder like each fingertip is a smoldering coal, and he pulls away from the younger wolf, uncomfortable. Derek’s eyes follow the movement. His lips press together. Stiles swallows.

  
“I want to talk to him. Well, I want Lydia to talk to him, and then I want to be there, because I know he’ll want to ask questions, so I should probably be there for that.”

  
“Someone should go with you and Lydia. You know, just in case,” Isaac says.

  
“Are you offering?”

  
“I,” Isaac manages to say before Derek cuts him off.

  
“No. Scott will go with you and Lydia.”

  
Isaac’s jaw snaps shut obediently for his alpha, but the lines of his face are angry. Stiles looks to Derek again, surprised when he finds burning red eyes.

  
.


	4. Chapter 4

Deaton tells Stiles to get up on the table like a dog in need of a splint, and once he’s sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the stainless steel surface, the vet shines a pinpoint-light into his eyes. “Ow!” Stiles flinches away, squeezing his eyes shut at the sudden flare.

“Pupils dilating as they should be, then,” is what Deaton says, nodding. Then he checks Stiles’ pulse with two fingers against the soft side of his wrist while continuing, “Lydia told me a little bit about what happened. It’s unusual, and a little unprecedented, for a witch so early in her training to be able to raise the dead.”

Lydia, leaning against the sink in the corner, flips her strawberry hair and flashes her teeth.

“I’m not a _zombie_ ,” Stiles protests, snatching his wrist away from Deaton. Deaton frowns but announces, “Well, you’ve got a pulse.”

“Yes, thank you for that.”

“Say a little more about how I’m unbelievably powerful,” Lydia says, examining her fingernails. “And how everything about me is a little unprecedented.”

Deaton ignores her and diagnoses Stiles instead. “You’re not a zombie, but you’ve got a condition.”

Dread forms a knot in Stiles’ stomach. Scott inches closer protectively on the other side of the table. “What do you mean, a condition?” they both say at once.

“I mean I started researching as soon as Lydia told me, and the only thing I can say for sure is that it’s rare to be brought back from death without something changing, without...a price.”

“The coin thing again?” Scott asks, but Deaton shakes his head.

“More like an exchange. My guess is - and I’ve only read about things like this - is that, well, Stiles, you’ve been to the other side. The link was made. You crossed over, if only for a few minutes, and you’re tied to it, in some way. There’s no severing that link, now. You’ll always have access to it, or.” Deaton pauses, lips twisting and concern taking over his features. “Or maybe it will always have access to you.”

Then Deaton checks his pulse again, choosing not to comment on the sudden increase in rhythm when Stiles processes what he says. Stiles thinks back on the chills and cold that has plagued his consciousness since that night, and imagines the long fingers of the dead reaching out to him, bringing ice to whatever skin they manage to touch.

Deaton opens one of the drawers near the sink and takes out a small glass bottle with a cork stopper. In it is a pile of sandy dust. He opens the stopper with a small pop, and dips his smallest finger into the thin material. Lydia tries to appear uninterested, but cannot help but stare. Deaton takes his finger with dust clinging to it and dabs it behind each of Stiles’ ears, and then marks an ‘x’ on his forehead. Scott sniffs the dust curiously, and then recoils.

Just as well, since he was going to comment on personal space anyway. “What is this stuff?” Stiles brushes the x on his forehead and rubs the residue between his fingers. He brings his fingers to his nose and recoils just as quickly as Scott had. It’s spicy, but not particularly unpleasant.

“For good luck,” Deaton says. “That’s all. We’ll see if it actually does anything.”

.


	5. Chapter 5

Update, Stiles thinks. The powdery, spicy stuff does nothing. 

That night, he sinks into a dark and bottomless sleep. At least, it seems bottomless, like falling in space, until a hand reaches out to him and grasps his, and attached to that hand is an arm, and a shoulder, and a torso, and then there is a boy, no older than thirteen, whose skin is white as a sheet, standing at his side. His eyes are black and stark in his face, sunken, and his hair lank and colorless. The hand that grasps Stiles’ has the grip of a dead fish. Stiles pulls away and makes a face, not caring about offense. Besides, this is a dream, right?

They’re standing in the yard of a modest house. The boy takes a step towards the house, and that’s when Stiles’ knees give out. He sinks to the prickly grass and stares.

The back of this boy’s head is missing. Just - gone. The jagged edges of bone where his skull should be are naked of flesh and hair in a space about as large as a baseball. Something writhes inside the hole.

“Do you know Jason?” the boy says in a resounding voice. It originates from nowhere and everywhere all at once. He turns to Stiles. “Do you know him?” 

His own voice escapes him. The boy’s eyes bore into his, until they seem to be just pools of endless black. Cold begin to creep into his body from his toes and fingertips as he sits helpless and silent in the grass. He shakes his head. No.

“Will you tell him for me? It wasn’t his fault. I’d like to go home, now.” The way he stands is unnaturally still. He tilts his head and Stiles thinks he’s hears bones cracking.

Finding his voice finally, Stiles manages, “Who’s Jason? Are you Jason? Where are we?”

“My friend Jason,” the boy says. “My friend Jason, with the lake house?”

“What wasn’t his fault?”

The boy tilts his head the other way, and he definitely hears a snap. In one moment he is inches from Stiles’ face, and the air around him chills to the point of condensation. When he breathes, mist forms. “Me,” the boy whispers in his ear, and then he opens his mouth wide, and before Stiles’ eyes there is a yawning chasm where the boy was, and the wind blows and he falls into it, gaining speed. This time he knows it is not bottomless, knows there is ground waiting for him at the end, counts the seconds in the dream - 

And jerks awake in his bed, the covers kicked off the mattress completely, and all of his windows open. He shivers when the cool Fall breeze gusts in through all the open windows, rifling through the open books and loose papers on his desk, and rises to close them again. Only when he is near them does he see the fog left on the glass, and the handprints in the panels, two of them, and too small to be his own.

.

Stiles does not return to sleep after that. No, he climbs into his bed and pulls the covers up to his chin and lays flat on his back and stares at the ceiling, and when the ceiling starts to swim in his vision he sits up and wraps his blanket around him like a sleeping bag, and stares at his lap, which is just about the least threatening thing to look at in the moment.

Twice he thinks he sees pale fingers reaching for him in his periphery, but when he turns to check, there is nothing. Just his crazy imagination. Maybe the whole thing was imagined. Maybe he was so sleep deprived that he hallucinated the creepy handprints on his window when he woke from the dream. 

The house creaks and Stiles squeezes himself into a ball. Maybe not.

He calls Scott. Scott does not pick up, despite his rapidly rising heart rate. He’s his best friend, but even Stiles has to reason that answering a call at - he checks - 3:48 in the morning is not something he expects Scott to do on a regular basis. The next person his mental roll-a-dex suggests is Derek.

Derek will definitely answer a call at 3:48 - 3:49 in the morning. Derek will probably be brooding on his couch at exactly this time, thinking on his mistakes or sins and probably alphabetizing them, too. Stiles briefly entertains the idea of calling Isaac, or even Lydia, but some part of him knows that if a big bad ghostie wants his soul, the person he wants by his side is not a fledging witch or protective puppy, but an alpha.

He dials Derek and waits, phone pressed against his ear, dreading the ringtone. Once, twice, three times. Derek picks up on the fourth.

“It’s four in the morning,” he says as a greeting, voice rough.

“And you picked up anyway,” Stiles says.

“What do you want?” Derek asks next, never one to dawdle.

“Er,” Stiles says. What _did_ he want? He had planned as far as making the call. Does he want Derek to stay on the phone with him until morning? Does he want for Derek to say that everything will be all right? Does he want Derek to tell him he’s being stupid and to go to sleep? If this had been Scott, Stiles would have asked him right away to come over and stay the night with him. No shame. He takes a deep breath. “Had a weird dream,” he confesses, closing his eyes briefly and seeing the boy again, with the hole in his head.

“What kind of weird dream makes you want to call me at four in the morning?” Derek grumbles, although Stiles thinks he can make out the note of suggestion in his voice, so he grasps that note to haul himself back to some level of comfort.

“Not that kind of weird dream,” he teases, and he can almost see the way Derek would grit his teeth together. Maybe his cheeks would redden, only a little. “A weird kind of weird dream. A dead kind of dream.”

The shift in Derek’s voice is sudden. There is concern and the raw edge of protectiveness. “What happened? What did you see?”

“I don’t know.” He struggles to describe what he experienced. “It was - there was this little boy. He was dead. Like, hole in the head dead. He - the windows were - it was _cold._ I woke up and all the windows were open, and there were - Derek, there were _handprints on the windows._ ” 

The house creaks again, and he nearly drops his phone to the covers when he tries to curl himself into an even tighter ball.

“I’m guessing these weren’t _your_ handprints.”

“Of course not,” Stiles whispers viciously.

He hears Derek sigh on the phone, staticy and metallic. Seconds tick by. Finally, Derek says, “I’ll be there in ten, okay? Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Ha,” Stiles says, relief releasing the tension from his body. Ten minutes. He is so relieved that he doesn’t even think about how he never asked for Derek to come. “I never do stupid things.”

The line goes dead and everything is silent again. For ten minutes Stiles distracts himself with a game on his phone, and then with Facebook, and then with Instagram.

Ten minutes turns into fifteen, and when a knock comes on the glass of one of his windows, the phone leaps out of his hands in his surprise. He nearly burrows into the covers, but then his brain helpfully remembers that Derek is on his way, so he takes a hesitant look at the window and finds Derek’s pale face there.

He lets him in and Derek spills into his room like a cat, silent and serious, in his leather jacket and dark jeans - does he even own pajamas? Stiles looks down at his flannel pants and raggedy-old t-shirt. He shuts the window behind him. Derek opens the door to Stiles’ closet, closes it, opens his drawers, closes them, and peers into the connecting bathroom before returning to the center of Stiles’ room. Stiles has climbed back into bed by now, and is watching Derek curiously. Then Derek gets down onto the floor and checks under Stiles’ bed, and when he re-emerges, he says, “No monsters in the closet or under the bed, so can you go to sleep now?”

Stiles throws a pillow at him, frowning when it bounces off of the werewolf harmlessly. He gets a toothy grin for the effort. “I’ll take the floor, then.”

“You’d better not,” Stiles says. “I can’t sleep.”

“So you take the floor, and I’ll take the bed,” Derek suggests, shrugging.

“No way.” Stiles thinks about the number of hands that can fit in the space between his bed and the floor. Dozens of them. Dozens of reaching hands could potentially be under his bed. “You don’t even want to hear about my dream?”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” he says. “You told me there was a boy who died. Now tell me why you’re terrified of invisible monsters in the middle of the night,” he reasons.

It is difficult to start. The dream carried off into the night, dissipating like a fog when the sun rises, when Stiles awoke. He remembers the boy most of all, and the chill, and a name. Stiles tells him about the dream, what he can. Then after, the details that he can’t quite piece together. The grass in the lawn was evenly trimmed. The boy seemed sad, and angry. The house was familiar, though he can’t quite picture it anymore. He gets lost in the details and loses track of his words, and at one point in the telling his words begin to blur together, and his eyelids grow heavy, and then his eyes are closing, and he is falling asleep. Derek listens intently, and when the story trails to an end, he brings the blankets up over Stiles’ shoulders before balling up his leather jacket to use as a pillow on the floor.

.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: triggers - references to and descriptions of suicide

He presses the heel of his palm against his steering wheel and smiles at the aborted honk that follows. Scott tumbles out of his doorway just moments later, juggling his bookbag and lacrosse stick and gym bag, a Poptart in his mouth. Allison also appears in the doorway, much more calmly, and hugs Ms. McCall with some degree of grace, before taking Scott’s lacrosse stick so that he can deal with the other bags, and then the Poptart too. She takes a bite and then sticks it back in between Scott’s teeth, smiling. They both take their sweet time walking to Stiles’ jeep in the crisp morning air. Stiles gives Scott’s mother a little wave as Scott climbs into the back - a lesson learned after the first group morning carpool, wherein Allison gave Scott her best pout for the entire day - and Allison into the front, immediately switching the radio to a pop music station.

“Good morning to you, too,” Stiles says with forced cheer, always a little peeved when Allison just _touches his stereo_ like that.

“Morning,” Allison replies, nonplussed. Then she glances at Stiles again, alarm quickly crossing her features. “Wow, you look horrible.”

“Always good for my self-esteem.”

Sheepish, Allison ducks her chin. “You know what I mean.”

Stiles does know what she means. He takes a look at himself in his rearview mirror while backing out of the driveway: shadows under his eyes and a strange translucency to his skin that hollows out his cheeks. Scott meets his eyes in the mirror. “Rough night?” he asks, smirking.

“Okay, and when you make that face it makes me think you know something I don’t know.” They ease onto the road and begin to pass Scott’s familiar street.

“Derek texted me this morning.”

“Did he, now.”

Allison grins. “So you guys had a sleepover. Aw.” She pulls out her giant history textbook and a highlighter from her purse, flipping the text open and no doubt catching up on her reading.

“It was _not_ a sleepover,” Stiles protests, ears burning. “But, yeah, he did sleepover.”

“And you didn’t invite me.” Scott sits back, frown in place.

“Dude, I called you.” His friend digs a hand into his jeans and pulls out his phone, frown deepening at the screen.

“Oh.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. No doubt Scott and Allison were up to some pretty special things last night, then.

“Sorry.”

“Am I intruding on something?” Allison mumbles, more out of habit than actual interest, eyes intent on her history book. The bromance between Scott and Stiles has always been a little too easy to pick at.

From there they fall into familiar conversation. Scott complains about lack of sleep. Allison tells him to study more when they are around each other. Scott points out that being a werewolf makes it difficult to focus about once a month. Stiles points out that being a woman makes it difficult to focus about once a month, too, but you don’t see Allison’s grades slipping, do you? Scott grumbles. 

Then they pass a house that they pass every day on their drive to school, and Stiles slams on the brakes, heart jolting to this throat. The other two lurch forward in sync, shouting matching protests. “Stiles! What the hell?”

The house is a simple split-level, grey paneling that might have been white, at once. A small yard in front lays buffer between the house and the road, and a sad little mailbox stands guard at the end of the driveway. They pass this house every day, and yet, this is the first time that Stiles has really noticed it. He looks and goosebumps break out over his forearms.

He sees the boy in his mind. And the house they stood before.

This is the house, Stiles knows without a doubt.

“What are you doing?” Allison asks, the initial shock turning into concern at Stiles’ continuing silence.

He swallows once. “This is,” he manages.

“What?” Scott responds immediately, like an eager puppy. He even sandwiches himself between the driver and passenger seats, leaning forward.

Stiles’ eyes dart from the house to Scott to Allison, uncertain at first but swayed by the sincere expressions in both of their faces. “So I should probably tell you that I had a dream last night, and it was a I’m-being-haunted kind of dream, and that this house was in it.”

“ _What?_ ” Scott asks again, but this time more forcefully. “Wait, so this is why Derek was at yours last night?”

“Yup.” Stiles gently applies pressure the gas pedal, and they start to roll forward again. Both Allison and Scott bodily keep the house within their gazes, as though it could without warning sprout legs at its foundations and chase after them.

“What do you mean, haunted?” Allison prompts, turning back around in her seat.

Stiles lets them pass by three more houses before answering. “Like how I can see dead people and all of that. Haunted as in I had a dream about this boy who had the back of his head blown off, and he was standing right in front of this house, and he was, I don’t know, looking for something.” He pauses, shivers. “I woke up and all the windows were open, and there were handprints on the glass that were _way_ too small to be mine.”

His friends sit with that information for a moment, processing. Allison stares down into the book in her lap, but she isn’t reading. Scott sits back and crosses his arms, expression guarded. “What was the number on that house?” 

Stiles glances at Allison quickly. “Why?”

“Because we’ll need to look into that house,” she explains. “If this is real - if you’re really seeing ghosts. I mean, why wouldn’t you? If you’re really seeing them, then that dream was a message. And we need to look into it.”

From the backseat, Scott says, “445 Poplar. And you don’t need to look into it. I know what happened at that house.”

Allison closes her book and turns to look at her boyfriend. “And?” she presses, when he is not forthcoming.

“I remember. It was when we were in the 2nd grade. This boy in middle school - we didn’t play together or anything, but I’d seen him around - except my mom said that he wasn’t going to be around anymore. And I asked her why. And she said it was because he was in a better place.”

“So,” Stiles says. “He died.”

“Yeah. He died. He killed himself. My mom thought it was really important that we talk about it seriously. He was this scrawny kid. Some of the neighborhood kids called him Gnat.”

Stiles flinches. The jeep jerks in sympathy.

“So what does he want?” Allison asks, referring to the boy in Stiles’ dream. “Revenge?”

“What makes you think he wants revenge?”

Allison gives both boys a look. “Um, people called him Gnat?”

“So he wants revenge on all the people who made fun of him?” Scott looks sceptical. Stiles jumps to his defense.

“It wasn’t a vengeful dream. It was...sad. And he was looking for something. Someone. Jason.”

“When we get to school, we’ll go through the archives on the library. Something like that will be in the newspapers, you know?” Allison purses her lips, settling into her determination. “We’ll find out more about this kid. And we can probably find out who Jason is, too.”

“Maybe it was just a fluke,” Stiles backpedals suddenly, feeling unease creeping into his gut. Sure, he was brought back from the brink of death, and he was hearing and seeing things, but doing actual _research_ because of a dream he had made it too close and too real. “Maybe it was nothing.”

“And maybe werewolves aren’t real,” Scott adds glumly.

They drive the rest of the way to school with the radio taking over their silence.

.

Allison is right, of course. There is an article in the newspaper about the boy (Nathan Rose, 13) who tragically killed himself with a loaded firearm in the family’s home. His mother and father had not suspected anything amiss. Stiles does the math quickly in his head. The boy had been class of 2009. 

So they look in the yearbooks for the class of 2009, glancing quickly over the child-like faces of the students who were then in the sixth grade and find Nathan’s name. And then they look for a Jason. 

“With the lake house,” Stiles adds, not that it helps any, especially judging by the exasperated look Lydia shoots him.

Jason Barros is the easiest to track down. He has a public Facebook, for one, and updates incessantly. After school, Scott and Isaac pile into Stiles’ jeep with him to find Jason, who has just checked in to a local coffee shop. In retrospect Stiles realizes they probably should have brought Lydia, but she and Allison insisted on playing private eye and finding the other two Jason’s in the yearbook.

The coffee shop is sandwiched between a small bookstore and a used-clothing store, and looks very much not haunted. Stiles eases his jeep into an empty parking space and announces, “We didn’t really think this through.”

Scott says, “You know what. You’re right.”

So Stiles shuts down the engine and they sit in the jeep for a little while longer, each presumably thinking of their action plan. It is Isaac who suggests, “Let’s just go in, order a coffee, and then one of us can accidentally spill our drink on Jason, and then when we’re apologizing, we can be like, ‘Oh, it’s you!’ and then we can talk about Gnat.”

“Please call him Nathan,” Stiles mumbles. “And, oh my god, we’re not acting out a rom-com.”

Isaac shrugs. “Got a better idea?”

Scott and Stiles share a glance and both concede. “No, not at all.”

The shop is the kind of place that hosts open-mic nights on Wednesdays, and puts art from local artists on the wall for sale. The corners near the entrance are furnished with couches instead of chairs, arranged so that the least possible number of people can fit in the space, and rest of the floor space is taken up by tiny, cramped tables and equally tiny, cramped chairs. A comfortable murmur rises above the shop - low conversation with sprinklings of laughter. At the moment, it is filled near brimming with students from the local community college.

“He’s behind the counter,” Scott tells the group when they enter. “We can’t spill coffee on him, now,” he adds, almost sadly.

“We can still spill coffee on him,” Isaac says.

“What is my life,” Stiles asks the ceiling. “Okay, new plan. I’m ordering a coffee and realizing suddenly that I’ve seen him from somewhere, and hey, do you know Gnat Rose?”

“Nate,” Isaac corrects.

“Right. My cousin, Nate Rose, who has since passed, but weren’t you friends with him? There, that’s normal, right?”

“Sure.” Isaac shrugs. Stiles reminds himself never to count on Isaac for a good plan.

“Well, then.” And he goes.

The problem, of course, is that as soon as Stiles takes a step towards the counter, the door to the shop flies open with a bang, and a gust of wind blows through the small area, whistling and throwing papers and napkins and even some pastries to the ground. There is a collective cry of, “Oh!” as the customers are caught unawares, and then the dust settles, and after some nervous laughter, business resumes.

Stiles heard something in the wind.

“It’s not this guy,” he says, turning abruptly back to the door and to his friends. He stumbles, and Isaac catches him, almost dropping him when instinct tells him to let go of the burningly cold thing in his hands. But Isaac holds on. Scott sniffs the air experimentally, and scowls at what he discovers.

“You’re freezing,” Isaac tells him.

“There’s something weird about the air,” Scott tells him.

Stiles shrugs Isaac off, feeling surefooted again. “It’s not this guy,” he says again. “We can go.”

.


	7. Chapter 7

The house is empty. The boy knows this house, knows all the knicks and grooves and creaking steps. His mother will be at work, and his father is away, as always, consulting. Just as well. He’s been planning this for weeks.

Today had been just like the rest, and he was over it, really. He toes off his shoes by the entrance, and leaves the pair neatly lined up against the wall. He leaves his book bag by the door as well, propped up next to his shoes. It stands upright without the support of the wall; he had packed all of his books from his locker into the bag earlier, and now it’s so fat it looks like it’s going to rip its seams. He nods, satisfied.

Twenty-seven steps total to walk up the half-flight of stairs, bank a left and enter his room. He takes the note out of his desk drawer and fits the sheet between the keys of his desktop’s keyboard. Just to make sure, he walks out of the door to his bedroom and enters again, nodding when, he presumes, it takes just a moment for someone to notice the white paper against the computer’s black monitor.

Then he goes into his parents’ bedroom. He pulls open the closet doors and has to stand on his toes to reach the top shelf, but he does it, and his fingers grasp the edge of a cardboard box. Gritting his teeth, he encourages the box to move toward him, and not away from him, being very careful to catch it once the edge begins to tip downward because of gravity. From there it’s his fingertips against the box, and then he’s flat on his feet and looking inside.

Nothing that he hasn’t seen before. Just two days ago, in fact, he checked that the box and its contents were still in his parents’ closet.

He takes what he wants from the box with sure hands and replaces the container on the top shelf. It seems much lighter now and more willing to cooperate.

His dad has a small gun that he’s never used for self-defense. A few times, he’s taken him out into their backyard to shoot at tin cans and other targets, so he knows how the weapon works. It’s a slow thing, ancient, but his dad takes care of it well. Polishes it at least once a week. He checks the clip and finds it loaded. 

But in his parents’ bedroom? No. He knows that the bathroom will be easiest to clean. So he pads his way there, his bare feet making barely any noise against the carpeting in his house.

He climbs into the tub. First he sits with his back against the faucet, but that is uncomfortable, so he turns around and sits with his back against the smooth side of the bathtub. He pulls the shower curtains closed. Wrenches them open again. Should he shut the bathroom door? He climbs out of the tub to shut the door. It echoes. Then, he clambers back in.

He pushes the metal barrel of the gun into his mouth. It tastes like blood already.

“What do you think you’re doing?” his dad’s voice says, but when he looks for the man there is no one there. There is never anyone there.

He fits his finger against the trigger and unlocks the safety with his thumb. His world dwindles down to the cold metal quickly warming in his hands.

“Snap out of it!” the voice interrupts. The boy furrows his eyebrows, losing his concentration. This is not how it’s supposed to go. “I don’t want to have to--”

He grunts, putting pressure on the trigger. Immediately there is a throbbing pain in his shoulder and the back of his head, but not because of a bullet, and the wind is knocked out of him. He inhales shallowly, suddenly starved for breath, closes his eyes against the light that is now too bright. A shadow moves across his field of vision, and he thinks, this is what a panic attack feels like. 

Someone knocks the gun out of his hands, and then there are fingers digging into his biceps, hauling him out of the bathtub, pressing him up against a wall and holding him there. He’s shaken like a rattle. His eyes roll back into his head.

“Stiles!” Derek shouts, stunning him back into reality. “Stiles, wake up!”

Stiles blinks as the pieces of his fragmented vision begin to fit back together again. He’s in his own bathroom, in his own house, he realizes, and there is his dad’s old revolver on the tiled floor near the toilet. He feels bile rising to the back of his throat.

“Stiles!” Derek shouts again, frantic, punctuating it with another shake.

“I’m awake!” he says, as much to assure Derek as to make him stop assaulting him. “I’m awake, I’m awake. Let me go! Or help me God, I will vomit all over your leather jacket.”

It takes a second, but Derek releases him from his white-knuckled grip, and Stiles finds the energy to fall to his knees against the cold porcelain seat of the toilet, and heaves into the bowl. He’ll have bruises on his upper arms, later, and an ugly knot on the back of his head. When his stomach has settled and his breathing has returned to something resembling normalcy, he lays his cheek on his hand against the seat. He eyes the gun on the floor and shivers. 

Better than the alternative. 

“What the _fuck_?” Derek curses, still very close to Stiles, his breath hot on Stiles’ against the back of Stiles’ neck. 

Stiles, unable to answer, feels the little energy he has drain out of him, until even the toilet cannot hold him up, so he sinks to the floor and curls up on his side, knowing fully how pathetic he looks in front of the werewolf. The cold of the tiles seeps through his thin pajama pants. “If you hadn’t been here,” he says, trailing off, ending in a whisper. “Oh my god.”

“That doesn’t even cover it.” Derek begins to pace. “What were you thinking? What _was_ that? It was like you weren’t - you weren’t even _there_ , Stiles!” His shoes make angry squelching noises against the bathroom floor. Belatedly, Stiles realizes that it is raining outside.

“I don’t even know,” he manages.

“Was it - was that the ghost? The one you saw last night? Was it the same one?”

Stiles sighs, digs the palm of his hands into his eyes. His heart is still hammering in his ears. He breathes in once slowly, holds it, and then exhales just as slowly, trying to control the chattering of his teeth. He repeats the breath once more. “I think it was. I think it was him. I think he was showing me - he was showing me how he died.”

“And bringing you along with him!” Derek concludes angrily, still pacing. Stiles wishes he would stay still. He also wishes Derek would give him his leather jacket.

“He’s desperate,” Stiles reasons. “He wants me to find Jason.”

“Who the _hell_ is Jason?”

“I don’t know, Derek!” Stiles bursts, angry and bitter and confused and relieved. “Some friend he wants to find! God, I just - I just almost died - again! - because I was reliving some poor kid’s last day on earth, Derek. Can I get a minute?”

Derek stops pacing, but without his pacing it seems that his frenetic energy has nowhere to go, so he glares instead, and clenches and unclenches his fists. “What were you doing here, anyway?” Stiles asks the werewolf.

Derek sputters, defensive. He crosses his arms, and swings them out away from his body dramatically. “If I hadn’t come, who knows what would have happened!” 

“Yeah, I get that,” Stiles says appeasingly. “I just mean, why are you here at - Jesus, what time is it?”

“It’s a little past midnight. And you had that dream. Isaac told me what happened at the coffee shop. I thought.” He pauses, uncomfortable and shoulders deflating. “I thought I should check on you.”

“Good thing you did.”

Derek’s eyes snap to Stiles’, and he narrows them. “In the past, you would have called me a stalker.”

“Yeah, well, you still are one. But I’m glad you were stalking me tonight, aren’t I?” He flings one arm out behind him, hoping to gain purchase against the edge of the bathtub with his fingers. He does, and pulls himself up to sit against the basin. Derek twitches, like he wants to reach over to help, but stays his ground.

“How dangerous is this?” Derek asks in a rush.

And Stiles - of the quick wit and glib sarcasm - cannot answer. Instead, he says, “I can’t go back to sleep. If I go back to sleep, I mean. This is all new, but it really seems like if I close my eyes I’m pretty much fucked.” They’re still in the bathroom, standing and sitting on the cold tiles, Stiles in his bare feet. His t-shirt feels entirely too thin.

“So don’t go to sleep.” Derek says, and everything is always that simple for him. Then he says, “I’ll stay,” as Stiles is gaining the resolve to leave the small space, and his knees threaten to buckle again while he’s standing.

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll stay,” he repeats, firm. “I’ll slap you around if you look like you’re drifting.” He flashes his teeth.

“Ha,” Stiles breathes, without humor. “I’ve got a stockpile of Monster in my fridge. C’mon.”

They bring back armfuls of the energy drink, even though Stiles is pretty sure he’ll only need two, max, and set up in his bedroom. He absolutely triumphs over Derek when they play round after round of Mario Kart on his ancient system, though when the sun is beginning to taint the sky purple, Derek’s starting to get the hang of it. Sometime around 3am, Stiles hears his father stumbling in through the front door, just off duty, so he mutes his television and carries on. Somehow he ends up with the blanket thrown over his shoulders, his thumbs numbing against the controller, and Derek blinking himself awake - he hadn’t touched any of the drinks - by the time morning rolls around.

The doorbell chimes, echoing throughout the house, and Stiles jumps.

“I texted Isaac,” Derek explains, leaning back at Stiles’ utter look of betrayal. “You need to go to school.”

“Okay, _dad._ ” Stiles rolls his eyes. 

“No. You really need to. There are people at school. Less chance of you being alone if something happens.”

“More of a chance of me having an insane freak-out and being the creepy weird kid who has seizures every now and then and my life being over,” Stiles rambles. His heart lurches. The energy drinks kick into effect. “Oh my god what if I can never go to sleep again? What if my entire life is just me chugging Monster and playing Mario Kart so that I never go to sleep so that the dead can’t get me? But - but the dead never sleep. And I need to sleep, eventually. Oh my god I’m doomed.” Then Derek is shaking him again.

“You are not doomed,” he states resolutely. “And you need to answer the door.”

Stiles grumbles, but in the end it’s just plain impolite to leave Isaac on the porch, so he answers the door with his blanket still around his shoulders, trailing behind him like a cape, and glares when Isaac stares at him with wide eyes. Derek trails behind him.

“Wow,” Isaac greets.

Stiles steps aside to let him in.

“You look like shit,” Isaac continues.

“Yes, thank you.” Stiles nods, annoyed, having been told that for the second morning in a row. “Just trying not to fall asleep for fear of ghosts haunting me and making me re-enact their suicides, you know. Ordinary night.”

“Well, then you look great if you take that into consideration,” Isaac amends.

“Appreciated.”

“Here.” Derek shoves a fresh t-shirt and a pair of jeans Stiles had lying around on his bedroom floor in his direction. When had he gone through Stiles’ things? “Dress up like a normal person and then go. Isaac will drive you.”

Isaac stands a little straighter at that.

“Where are you going?” he asks Derek, letting the blanket fall to the floor. On second thought he bunches it up into something resembling ‘folded’ and dumps it on the couch in the living room. Quickly, he changes out of his pajamas and pulls on the clothes that Derek had presented to him, trying to ignore how the chill morning air makes goosebumps pebble his skin.

When he turns, fully dressed, Isaac is staring at the floor, a pleasant flush having crept over his cheeks.

“I’m going to find Jason.”

Stiles frowns, sceptical. “You make it seem like he’s just standing in a bookstore somewhere with a big sign in his hands.”

“I know which Jason you need,” Derek explains patiently, which makes Stiles frown even deeper. Then it clicks.

“Oh.” His mouth forms a little ‘oh’ also. “He was your year.”

“Yeah.” A dark shadow passes over Derek’s face, and then it is gone. “He was.”

.


	8. Chapter 8

School is a wash. Stiles finishes another two cans of Monster to get through it, and doesn’t learn anything. After school, Isaac brings him to Derek’s, letting himself in with his own personal key.

By now Stiles is a twitching mess of manufactured energy, and he can barely stand still.

Isaac tries to sit him down on the couch, but he’s immediately up and about again, walking over to the window, remembering the handprints, then walking into the kitchen and peering into the cool refrigerator listlessly, then practically walking laps around the living room.

“You need to calm down,” Isaac tells him. Stiles laughs, a wild sound. “Derek will be here in a minute.”

That, of course, does nothing to calm him. It sends a fresh wave of adrenaline into his system, and it messes horribly with the effect of the energy drinks. He does have to sit down, now, but only because he’s pretty sure he’s going into cardiac arrest. He falls into the couch and moans. 

“Why is this happening to me,” he asks no one. He hears Isaac walking away from him, presumably toward the kitchen.

“I’m going to make coffee, okay? Don’t fall asleep on me.”

_Sleep_ is not the thing he falls into on the couch. It is more that he closes his eyes for a moment and then ten minutes have passed. When he opens his eyes, Isaac is sitting at his feet, and there are two steaming mugs of coffee on the low table in front of them. There is also a canister of salt.

Isaac, of all things, appears to be doing homework.

“Um,” Stiles says.

“You’re back.” The blond curls do not turn.

“You let me fall asleep.”

“You looked like you needed it.”

“What if I - the ghost - tried to kill himself - me, again?”

“I would have stopped you,” Isaac promises. He leans his head back, and suddenly he is there between Stiles’ knees, body twisted around into the ‘v’ of Stiles’ thighs, innocent and not-so-innocent at all. “You’re safe with me.” He cocks an eyebrow, challenging.

Heat curls into his belly and spreads like ink into water. The look Isaac sends him wards off the chill in his bones. Ever since that night, in fact, Isaac has been his constant source of warmth. He feels the heat creep into his cheeks.

“What’s the salt for?” he asks, voice hoarse.

Isaac turns back around and reaches for it, examining the can. “Haven’t you ever watched Supernatural? I thought about putting you in a ring of salt, but then I realized that Derek would bitch and moan about the clean up for ages, after.”

He stiffens suddenly, then climbs up off the floor and positions himself on the opposite end of the couch, socked feet near Stiles’ lap and a book in his hands. He barely has time to register the swift change before he hears keys jimmying the lock of the front door.

Derek steps through, and then another man. He’s slighter than Derek, but half a head taller, with sandy-colored hair and glasses and lips that are too thin for his face. As soon as he’s through he looks around Derek’s apartment nervously, briefly nodding when his eyes come across Stiles and Isaac on the couch. Isaac nods back. Stiles squints. He reminds him of a mouse.

“So, is this like a reunion?” the stranger asks, walking in ahead of Derek toward the living area. “Wait, you guys weren’t our year. I’m Jason.” He extends a hand to Stiles, who glances at it, mouth working.

“Uh,” Stiles says. Of course Derek hadn’t explained anything at all to him. Left all the hard work to Stiles, as usual. “Stiles.”

They shake hands, a little shock of electricity zapping between them when their palms touch, which has Jason flinching back. “Whoops.” He apologizes, probably thinking it’s his fault for tracking static across the floor. “So what’s this you need me to look at?”

Derek meanwhile has dropped his keys onto the table by the door and is shedding his jacket. He shoos Isaac off the couch and Isaac goes, curling up into the seat of an armchair like a disgruntled puppy, while Derek takes his seat. “Jason’s a computer programmer,” Derek explains. “Pure luck I ran into him.”

“Oh,” Stiles says, catching on quickly. “For that thing. With your computer.”

“Yeah. That thing.”

He glares at Derek, for making things as awkward as they could possibly be in a situation like this. What could he say to bring up the topic of Nate Rose? What did the ghost of Nate even want? So they found Jason - did he want them to tell him something? Stiles tries to remember that first dream he had, with the house, and can’t remember the message. 

Isaac - bless him - actually says, “I’ll go get it,” and wanders off into a room that Stiles has never been in, presumably to grab Derek’s laptop. Stiles tries to imagine Derek at a computer and just - can’t. He’d be the hunt-and-peck typer, and probably perform searches using Bing. He doesn’t realize he’s spacing out until by chance he glances over at Derek, and the man is glaring back at him with purpose, arms spread out along the back of the couch. He tilts his head toward Jason in what he must believe is a subtle gesture.

Jason has taken Isaac’s seat in the armchair, and leans forward toward the coffee mugs still steaming away. “So, you guys roommates or something?” This has Derek chuckling - and really, he does an amazing job of pretending to be normal and not a psychopath when company is over - and they chat about the inane bits of their lives after high school, Derek glossing over his family history.

Stiles nods along and nearly burns himself with the coffee. But, now what? It isn’t like Stiles has a grasp on this whole ghost thing. More like the spirits make him do and see things when it’s convenient for _them._ It isn’t like he can just call Nate up and ask him what he wants, right? Or, maybe - 

“Be right back,” he announces, just as Isaac is emerging from Derek’s room, laptop balanced in one hand. He’s frowning at the screen. When they cross paths on Stiles’ way to the bathroom, he sees lines of code flashing angrily on it. Huh. The kid is always full of surprises.

This bathroom is nothing more than a toilet, sink, and mirror, tastefully bland and rarely-used. He flicks on the light and closes the door behind him. As he stands before the sink with his hands braced against the porcelain, the mirror reflects his pale, thin face. His eyes are a little bloodshot, grey smudges forming beneath them. Now, how is he going to do this? 

Feeling a little insane, he mumbles to himself, “Okay, Nate Rose, we’ve got your guy. You can come out, now."

Nothing. Not that he really expected anything. Frustrated, he scrubs his hands over his hair, thinking about his options if Nate were to come again to him tonight. None of them are good.

"Come on, dude. Just tell me what you want me to tell him." He remembers the handprints on his windows. Inspired, Stiles huffs a breath over the glass of the mirror, watching it fog briefly. He does it again, and this time quickly traces a finger into it, writing out: Nate Rose.

Still, nothing.

"Nate, man, I am giving you permission to come out, right now."

He hangs his head, wishing he had a handle on this. Wishing that Deaton knew more about what he was going through. He realizes he's been in the bathroom for some time, so he turns the faucet on in the sink and turns around to lean against it, his back to the mirror now. He needs to think.

Nate died, ended his own life. The dream was a sad one. Jason was his friend. But Jason knows that he died - it seems like the whole town was pretty aware of the suicide. Jason, his friend with the lake house. He's so lost in thought turning the details over and around in his mind that he doesn't notice the fog filling up the tiny bathroom until he blinks and moisture catches on his eyelashes.

Alarmed, he turns back around the flicks the faucet off, yelping when his fingers come in contact with the hot metal. He thought he had turned the cold water on.

Then, he looks in the mirror. What he had written there on the glass stands out against the condensation gathering: Nate Rose.

The lights flicker off, and Stiles jumps, cursing. His hands find the light switch and he wriggles the switch back and forth a few times, but nothing happens. 

Just when he's about to give up and get out of the freaking malfunctioning bathroom, they come back on, and he flinches, catches movement in the mirror. He doesn't want to look but he looks anyway, throat clenching. He knows what he will see. 

There is a boy in the mirror.

He says something, but Stiles cannot hear. Nate beckons with one hand, his eyes just as black as they were in the dream, and Stiles - Stiles is drawn to him, feels like a cold hand has palmed the back of his neck and is pushing him forward. So he leans, until his ear is pushed right up against the mirror, and a boy's voice says, "I can come out to play."

A pop in the air that sends a shiver up and down Stiles' spine, and then everything goes dark.

.


	9. Chapter 9

His throat is, simply put, on fire. Stiles swallows but even that hurts, like he's swallowing sand, or needles, and then the aches make themselves known. Everything throbs. He feels like a pincushion, like someone's discarded doll that's been sewn back together, like he's been ripped apart at the seams. And he hasn't even opened his eyes yet.

Stiles coughs and tastes metal on his tongue.

His eyes open into slits experimentally, and he huffs his relief when he sees a relatively harmless looking wall, and a bookshelf filled with books by the door, and a desk. He realizes the soft cushion behind his head is a pillow, and the heavy thing around him the duvet of a bed. A bed he doesn't recognize, but still.

Rationally thinking that if he were in any danger, he wouldn't have been placed in a ridiculously comfortable bed, Stiles burrows into the covers and rolls onto his side, curling into himself. He could use some water, but that would require moving, or speaking, so he wills it with his mind and hopes for the best.

The door opens with a creak. The smell of coffee wafts in through the opening, and Stiles groans. Scott's voice is low when he says, "Thought I heard you." His feet make barely any noise as he moves closer to Stiles, and he closes the door behind with a gentle click. Stiles wants to tell him that loud noises aren't going to break him, okay, but then he thinks about saying that to him at a normal volume and his head pounds in protest. So maybe loud noises are not such a good idea.

"Mmhph," Stiles mumbles intelligently, shifting under the covers so that his head at least is above them. Scott very barely takes a seat on the bed, wincing a little when it dips with his weight.

"How do you feel?" he ventures, eyebrows dipping.

Stiles' voice grates, but he does say, "Like I just woke up in Vegas with my front tooth missing and a tiger in the bathroom and my best friend AWOL."

Scott makes an amused noise at the reference. "But I'm not AWOL, and I’m pretty I can’t get sunburned, anymore," he assures him, before laying a hand on what he thinks is Stiles' ankle. He's close enough, anyway. His hand is like a brand on Stiles’ knee.

He should ask what happened. He should. But then Scott will tell him, and Stiles would really rather not know, he thinks. In fact, he would really rather go back to sleep and pretend that the past few days were just a really intense, vivid series of dreams. As usual, though, his brain to mouth filter does absolutely no filtering, so he finds his traitorous lips forming the words: "What happened?" and hasn't he been asking that a lot lately?

Scott sighs. "Well we don't have to worry about Jason anymore. Or Nate," he begins. "And you're still at Derek's." Just the broad facts. Scott knows to expect a litany of questions now from his friend, and really, any other day Stiles wouldn't have held back. But today he is happy with just that much information. No more Nate and Jason, and Derek's bed is comfortable.

"You would tell me if I should be worried about anything, right?" he mumbles into the pillow. Lucky that Scott has werewolf hearing.

"Of course."

"So should I be?"

"I mean, Derek might be a little pissed that you're still in his bed. You know he slept on the couch last night?"

Stiles scoffs before noticing. "Wait, last night?"

"Yeah dude. It's Saturday."

Stiles groans audibly. That means he has missed an entire day.

"Don't worry. I told your Dad you were at my place last night."

Because that's what Stiles is worried about. Scott twitches, picking up on his fluttering heart rate. "What's wrong?"

"Gee," Stiles grumbles, getting ready for a long winded bitching. "My entire body hurts, my mouth tastes like blood, I'm missing a day of my life. Oh, and I could forever be a medium for ghosts who haven't moved on. If I fall asleep I get possessed. If I’m _awake_ I get possessed. Jesus is this what being a werewolf is like? I mean minus the ghosts and possession and plus the super human strength but I mean basically I think I feel like you pretty much feel after a rough night on the full moon."

By the end of his rant, his throat is in mutiny.

Scott says, "I see," like that helps any.

It doesn't, so Stiles just lets himself stew a while longer in self-pity until his heart rate returns to a steady _tha-thump_.

“Listen,” Scott says. “It’s going to be okay.”

Stiles is too exhausted to argue, but his friend takes the silence as agreement, or something close to it.

“When I first became a werewolf we had no idea what the hell was going on, either, but you stuck it through with me, you know? So. So I’m going to stick it through with you.” 

Scott’s voice hitches. He’s never been good at emotional eloquence, but his heart is not something that can be easily misunderstood. Now would be a perfect moment for a bro-hug, but Stiles’ body does not want to move at all, so instead he gives a little whine, and it would be embarrassing with anyone else, but Scott’s been his best friend for ages, and Scott knows about all the little sounds he makes and what they mean and why he’s making them, and he’s getting there with Allison, too. So Scott hugs him.

Well. Scott drapes his body over him the best he can, warm and solid, one arm around the back of Stiles’ shoulders and their faces close.

Stiles lets himself breathe, really breathe and relax and let go, and on the exhale Scott doesn’t mention the betraying shudder that brings wetness to his eyes. It’s over, for now, and whatever happens next, he’s got a pack of werewolves and a hunter and a witch at his back.

.


	10. Chapter 10

Stiles gets what he decides to call ‘little bites’ after that. Small errands at the request of lonely spirits, none quite so threatening as the first. He writes a letter at the request of a grandmother who left something for her daughter in their attic. He puts flowers on a grave in a cemetery two towns over, where the last bouquet has turned ugly and brown. He digs up a little girl’s doll in a park in the middle of the night. Sometimes Scott will come with him on these errands. Once, Isaac does, though he is skittery the entire time, no doubt remembering what he saw happen to Stiles with Nate. Which they still haven’t talked about. Small things.

Lydia tries to help in her way, acting like she is very put-upon but always showing up with a new tidbit of research or a cool-looking necklace. “Talisman,” she corrects, pursing her lips, before clasping it behind Stiles’ neck. The pendant, a warm, flat stone, sits just below the dip where his collarbone meets sternum. “Keeps out the evil ones, maybe.”

He even gets to sleep, once in a while. If his Dad has noticed that the grocery bills have grown enormously to account for Stiles’ ever-growing need for Monster, he doesn’t mention it, but he does start hiding the cans of it in his office, or bringing the energy drink down to the station, presumably to get Stiles to stop chugging it down like water to a man stranded in the desert.

This lack of Monster is precisely why Stiles is making a 2am run to the corner store on a Saturday night. He’s standing in front of the freezers, hands flat against the glass and debating between the Monster and going old-school for Red Bull, when he hears the sucking sound of another freezer door opening and shutting next to him, and then a throat clears. Stiles looks.

“Hey,” Derek says, all nonchalant, looking entirely too cool in a v-neck with his sunglasses tucked into the dip, even though it’s the middle of the night. He’s not wearing his leather jacket, which just means that his shoulders and biceps are out for all the world to see. Stiles remembers taking over Derek’s bed, just a few weeks ago, and flushes down to his roots. “How’s it going?” he continues, like they’re just two friends running into each other at the corner store.

Stiles supposed that they are, in a way. He could certainly consider Derek a friend, now, after all that’s passed. But then there’s the werewolf thing, and now the ghost thing, and also Derek staying over at his place for two nights keeping him from harm and then letting Stiles sleep in his bed for nearly two days, after. They haven’t really spoken since then. He knows that Scott and Isaac have been giving Derek the barest updates - knows that there are really no secrets in pack. It’s not that Stiles hadn’t _wanted_ to thank Derek for being his, for lack of a better term, knight in shining armor. It’s that he was just really fucking embarrassed, okay. “Uh,” he tries. “Hey.”

Derek lifts the gallon of milk he has just taken out of the freezer and raises an eyebrow. “Running low?”

“You could, ah, say that.” Stiles licks his lips and pretends he doesn’t see Derek’s eyes flicker at the movement. He opens the freezer and shovels energy drinks into his arms without really looking, and ends up with a mixture of Red Bull and Monster and one Starbucks Latte.

“Paying?” Derek tilts his head towards the cash register and Stiles nearly trips over himself in his haste to follow.

“Yeah. Yes. Um.”

Derek pays for his milk. And then he pays for Stiles’ energy drinks, too, waving away the thanks that Stiles stammers out. 

“You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack with those,” he cautions Stiles as the cashier bags up his drinks.

Stiles says, “I seriously doubt that’s how I’m going to go,” with a look that is half serious. Derek nods as they walk toward the automatic doors. Stiles is about 200% more likely to be offed as a sacrifice for a Satanic ritual, the rate he’s going. He’s not sure that it’s reassuring that Derek agrees with this.

“Where’s your jeep?” Derek scans the parking lot, frowning when he doesn’t see the blue monstrosity.

“I walked.” It was only a few blocks, and Stiles really needed the air, anyway.

“Well, let me give you a ride, then,” Derek offers, which makes Stiles nearly drop his bag of drinks in surprise.

“Um. Okay, sure. Yeah, thanks.” And then he’s sitting in Derek’s camaro with his energy drinks in his lap and Derek is climbing into the driver’s side and starting the engine.

“You’re not going to drink all of those tonight, are you?” And where is this concern coming from? All these questions? He wonders briefly if Derek has been possessed and then quickly discards the thought, because it’s insane.

“No, but I’ve got. A thing. There’s this soldier. One of his letters never reached home. So I’ve got to, you know, do some research.”

Derek chuckles. They ease out onto the main road. “You’re not a medium; you’re a librarian. Or - or a secretary. You write their letters or find lost ones.”

“Hey, sometimes I send flowers, too.”

“Secretary,” Derek repeats.

Stiles slumps back in his seat. “Yeah, but it’s okay, I guess. I mean, most of these guys just want to make sure their family are okay, and then they move on. Sometimes I can’t believe it’s that simple.”

Derek sucks in a breath. “Can you - is it - ?” he starts, before clamping his mouth shut.

“What?” Stiles presses.

“Can you _find_ them? Or do they always seek you out?”

“I’m not like posting on the missed connections section on Craiglist,” he jokes, but then he gets it, and stops laughing abruptly. Derek’s eyes stay on the road, but they take on a distinctively guilty shade of hazel. “Oh,” he says softly, thinking of Derek’s family. Of course he would want to try to communicate with them; he would want to make sure they knew they had been avenged.

“Forget it,” Derek grits.

“No, I’ll.” Stiles swallows. “I’ll let you know if I come across anything?”

They’ve reached Stiles’ house. Derek sinks into his seat, sighing. “It’s - don’t do that, for me.” He puts the car in park.

“It’s better if they’ve moved on,” Stiles reasons. “I’m sure it is.”

The corner of Derek’s mouth tilts up. “Yeah,” is all he says.

The engine purrs. Derek grips the steering wheel with white-knuckled fingers. “Well, thanks for the ride.” He turns to go, getting almost all the way out of the car before those white-knuckled fingers are gripping the back of the collar of his shirt and jacket, pulling him back in.

“Stiles,” Derek says, sudden intensity making his voice a low growl. Stiles sits back down but doesn’t close the door. “Is this better?”

Stiles blinks at Derek confusedly. “Than what?”

“I mean - has it been worth it? When Lydia - she acted so quickly, and -”

“Is this better than _dying_?” Stiles interjects, disbelief clear in his face and voice. “Are you _serious_?”

“I could have turned you,” Derek mumbles, and Stiles swipes angrily at Derek’s tight grip on his shirt, feeling something snag.

“You could have turned me into a werewolf,” he deadpans. “Why _didn’t you_?”

He opens his mouth once and then closes it, eyes very wide. “I didn’t want that for you.”

“And _this is so much better_ ,” Stiles practically hisses. Had Derek turned him, had he given him the bite, then at least - at least he would know what the hell was going on, instead of playing chess with the dead.

“At least you’re -”

“What? Normal?” 

Derek’s eyes slide away. “No. I guess not.” He pauses. “I was going to say human, but maybe that’s not the case, either.”

And that - that punches a hole in Stiles’ lung. That _Derek_ of all people could see him as something other than human. “You can be a real dick,” he spits, and fights to coordinate all his limbs so that he can clamber out of the car. "Thanks for the drinks." He stands, and something small falls to the ground with a clatter.

The pendant that Lydia gave him.

They both look at it with the same expression of horror. 

It happens quickly. So quickly that he can’t even stoop to pick up the talisman. His breath catches and he is submerged in ice water, and distantly he hears the sound of glass shattering and knows that he’s dropped the bag of drinks, but the cold is creeping in with such ferocity that Stiles can hardly think, until it clenches chilled fingers around his heart and squeezes, and then he is brought to his knees. He grits his teeth and can barely feel the broken glass under him.

“ _They did not leave_ ,” a voice whispers in his ear, and damn if he doesn’t recognize that voice. The first time he heard it had been in the school cafeteria. That felt like weeks ago. “Their kind are not welcome. Monsters. Murderers. _They did not leave._ ” He feels the voice growing violent with intent, feels a fresh swell of cold malice fill him up until he feels like a grenade.

He hears Derek shout his name like he is underwater, like something is pulling at his ankle and dragging him into the deep. He reaches but the light is dimming, and the cold dulls his senses. He closes his eyes against the anger this spirit feels, the violence it wants to commit.

Somewhere, he hears screaming. He realizes it’s himself. 

A loud pop in his ears as if the atmosphere has changed, and then he falls the rest of the way down into the cold. Screams out a warning he hopes Derek hears:

“ _Run._ ”

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that is where I'm ending this part. Thank you playing with me; it's been fun.


End file.
